“All you faculty are stupid!”
We often see a dichotomy between an upper and a lower class. And sometimes this division is false, but persists nonetheless.
For example, on an academic campus, we may see a prejudice on the part of maintenance workers who look down on the faculty.
I never did. My first real full time job was as a janitor. That propelled me into college and a career in academia, but I never forgot that beginning. Also, one of the maintenance workers on my campus was working there so his daughter could get a free education, and she was one of my best students. As for her father, he was always friendly and positive.
But not so with some of the others. I don’t know if negative attitudes come from a perceived notion that faculty look down on them, or if they feel superior having a job that didn’t require a college education, or a need to feel superior because they don’t have a degree. (Like the time I passed the tech institute students while wearing my “FRESHMAN” T-shirt and they derogatorily called, “Hey, College!” at me, thereby asserting their dominance.)
Anyway, two examples of maintenance posturing:
In the Theater in which I taught my classes and directed my shows, the lighting was set up quirkily. If you flicked the light switches by the door, ceiling fluorescents turned on and off. But not the first set of lights right above the stage; they were on a separate switch in the side room where the furnace lived.
At some point, someone decided that they had to keep that door locked. Which meant I couldn’t get in to turn it off and not have it wash out my projection screen, or get (close to) a true blackout. I had to call campus police and have them open the door for me—which was a waste of my time and others’. When I complained, a maintenance supervisor came in to show the stupid faculty member how light switches work. His attitude was obvious—until flicking the wall switches didn’t work, and I pointed out the switch in the room. He clicked it on. And off. And back on, and then tried the wall switch again. It stayed on. He uttered a baffled, “Huh.” Apparently I had been right after all.
I then convinced them to give me a key to the door so I could open it myself. And wouldn’t you know it, within days after getting my key, someone decided locking it just wasn’t that important.
Another example happened with the faculty office building men’s room. You could move the lock to the correct position, but the mechanism would not engage—as one of our faculty members discovered while sitting on the toilet and having someone walk in on him. Nothing was really done, though, until the bathrooms were reassigned as all gender. Then someone else complained so—rather than fix the lock—they installed a sliding bolt. But of course, whoever installed it had to put a little sign under it that said, “Slide to lock,” because, since faculty are stupid and couldn’t get the other lock to work, we needed explicit instructions for this one.
Ridiculous.
MUSOFYR 